SWIFT MTs / Learning brief
SWIFT MT9xx: statements and confirmations
Your notes
In simple terms / 01
What this means in plain language
Describes the SWIFT Category 9 messages — the MT900 debit confirmation, MT910 credit confirmation, and MT940, MT942, and MT950 statements — and how they feed reconciliation of the accounts a bank holds at other banks.
A bank holds accounts at other banks so it can settle payments around the world; each such account, held by one bank at another, is called a nostro. SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) Category 9 messages, part of the MT (Message Type) standard, are the alerts and statements for those accounts, and they carry cash-management information rather than payment instructions. A confirmation reports a single movement: an MT900 confirms a debit and an MT910 confirms a credit, often within moments of the entry being booked. A statement reports activity in full: the MT940 customer statement lists every entry with an opening and a closing balance, usually once per business day, while the MT942 gives an interim report during the day and the MT950 is a plainer statement variant. Together they tell a bank what actually happened on its accounts elsewhere, as opposed to what its own systems expected. Comparing the two, entry by entry, is reconciliation.
Complete lesson / 02
Understand the full idea, step by step
You would not run a household on what you assume is in your account — you check the statement to see what actually moved. A bank does the same for the accounts it holds at other banks, and the messages that let it check are SWIFT's Category 9 family: quick confirmations of single movements, and full statements of everything that happened.
The Category 9 family
- MT900
- Confirmation of debit — a specific debit has been booked against the account.
- MT910
- Confirmation of credit — a specific credit has arrived.
- MT920
- Request message — asking the servicing bank to send a statement or report.
- MT940
- Customer statement — opening balance, every entry, closing balance, usually once a day.
- MT942
- Interim transaction report — movements delivered during the day, before it closes.
- MT950
- Statement message — a plainer statement variant.
Confirmations report one movement; statements report many
The difference across the family is scope. A confirmation reports a single entry: the MT900 says one debit was booked, the MT910 says one credit arrived, each typically sent within moments, like a push notification that money has just left or landed. A statement reports many entries together: the MT940 sets out an opening balance, a line for every movement, and a closing balance, usually once per business day, with the MT942 giving an interim view before the day closes. Confirmations answer "what just happened to this one entry?"; statements answer "what happened across the whole account?"
Two rhythms: intraday and end of day
- NOTIFICATION
During the day, an MT910 confirms an expected credit has landed on the nostro — the intraday rhythm, valued for its speed.
- LEDGER
That confirmation can release a decision waiting on money, such as allowing a dependent outgoing payment to proceed.
- NOTIFICATION
At the close, the MT940 arrives with the full day's lines; the MT942 may have given an interim view earlier.
- LEDGER
Maya's reconciliation engine matches every statement line against the entries Bank Alfa's own ledgers expected.
- VALIDATION
Anything that fails to match becomes a break, parked in an investigation queue or a suspense account until it is explained.
These messages fly back and forth all day — do they move the money that they report?
No. A Category 9 message reports an entry that has already been made in the servicing bank's books; it does not move value. The MT910 tells Bank Alfa that Meridian has credited its account — the credit happened in Meridian's ledger, and the message is the notice of it. Read these as information and status, never as the movement itself.
COMMON CONFUSION
“An MT910 credit confirmation is what causes the money to appear on the nostro.”
The credit already exists in the servicing bank's books; the MT910 only reports it. If the confirmation were delayed or lost, the credit would still be there — Maya would learn of it from the end-of-day MT940 instead. The message reports the entry; it never creates or carries it.
WHAT IF — A statement line does not match anything Bank Alfa's ledger expected — or a reference on an entry was truncated or reformatted by the servicing bank, so automatic matching misses it.
What happens: The item becomes a reconciliation break: an entry the statement shows but the ledger did not anticipate, or the reverse. Duplicated lines after a resend cause the same trouble.
How it is handled: The break is parked in an investigation queue or held in a suspense account until Maya's team explains and clears it. At scale this matching is a continuous operation, and how far a bank automates it varies widely between institutions.
STRICTLY SPEAKING
Strictly speaking, an MT940 carries precise fields — a transaction reference in field 20, the account in field 25, a statement and sequence number in field 28C, an opening balance in field 60, a repeating statement line in field 61, and a closing balance in field 62 — and the balance-field options distinguish a final balance from an intermediate one. The full formats live in the SWIFT Standards MT Category 9 documentation, which requires a SWIFT user account, and the ISO 20022 successors are the camt.052, camt.053, and camt.054 reporting messages.
FOR NOW, REMEMBER
- Category 9 messages report on the accounts a bank holds elsewhere; they carry information and status, never money.
- Confirmations (MT900 debit, MT910 credit) report a single entry, fast; statements (MT940, MT942, MT950) report many entries, on a rhythm.
- Intraday, confirmations can release decisions waiting on money; at end of day, statements feed reconciliation.
- Whatever the ledger and the statement do not agree on is a break, worked in an investigation queue or suspense until cleared.
TRY IT YOURSELF
Bank Alfa's MT940 for its nostro at Meridian Bank shows a credit that Bank Alfa's own ledger never expected. What is the sound conclusion?
Statements and confirmations report the entries that bank-to-bank payments leave behind. Next we look at the messages that create those entries — the MT2xx family that moves funds between financial institutions.
KEEP GOINGKey takeaways / 03
Three things to remember
- 01
SWIFT Category 9 messages report cash movements and balances on a bank's accounts, not payment instructions.
- 02
The MT900 confirms a debit and the MT910 a credit, while the MT940, MT942, and MT950 report account activity as statements.
- 03
Banks match these against their own expected entries to reconcile nostro accounts, and anything that fails to match becomes a break.
Practical use cases / 04
Where you would use this
A liquidity desk reads incoming MT910 credits intraday to confirm expected cover has arrived before releasing payments.
A reconciliation team matches every MT940 statement line against the entries its own ledgers expected, investigating any break.
An operations analyst uses an MT942 interim report to track movements on a nostro before the end-of-day statement arrives.
Worked example / 05
Put the idea into a real situation
Illustrative example: a fictional bank, Kestrel Bank, expects EUR 500,000.00 of cover to arrive on its nostro account at a correspondent. During the morning an MT910 credit confirmation reports exactly EUR 500,000.00 booked, so the liquidity desk releases a dependent payment. At end of day the MT940 statement lists that EUR 500,000.00 credit among all movements, with matching opening and closing balances. Kestrel Bank's reconciliation engine matches the statement line to the entry its own ledger expected. Had the MT940 shown EUR 50,000.00 instead, the EUR 450,000.00 difference would be parked as a break for investigation.
Evidence & review / 07
Evidence & review
SWIFT MT Category 9 statements and confirmations, used for nostro/vostro reconciliation; ISO 20022 camt.052/053/054 are the reporting successors.
What this brief simplifies: The account structure is reduced to one nostro at one correspondent. Field detail is summarised; full MT940 formats require a SWIFT user account. Degree of reconciliation automation varies by bank and is described at concept level.
Sources for this brief3
- Official requirement
Swift Standards MT (annual standards releases) ↗ — Swift · MT Category 9 — MT900/910/920/940/942/950
Full field-level specifications live in the Swift Knowledge Centre User Handbook behind a swift.com login; content here relies on public summaries. Swift ended MT-to-ISO 20022 coexistence for in-scope cross-border payment instructions (for example MT103 and MT202) in November 2025; MT statement messages are being phased out on a separate timeline.
- Scheme-specific rule
Cross-Border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) usage guidelines ↗ — Swift (CBPR+ working group) · camt.052/053/054 reporting equivalents under CBPR+
Full guidelines require MyStandards access; content here relies on public summaries. MT-to-CBPR+ translation rules are published on Swift's translation portal.
- Simplified educational illustration
Payments Signal editorial teaching models — Payments Signal · Maya's nostro reconciliation scenario
Used wherever diagrams, scenarios, figures, or example values are didactic constructions rather than sourced facts; every such use carries a simplifications disclosure. All people, companies, banks, and list entries in examples are fictional.